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Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
yea, it's not necessarily more democratic in this case. in this one case mob rule would result in the same result. representative/decentralized democracy (i.e. state autonomy instead of federal autonomy), on the other hand, would drag this issue out for decades to come.
to clarify: i never actually did say this was a bad thing. i'm pleasantly surprised that gay marriage is now legal across the board in the US. i am pretty sure the only way this would be possible is for the supreme court to unilaterally declare it as such, as opposed to waiting for state legislation to fall in line on an individual basis in each of the 50 states.
but i don't take this as a sign that direct democracy would be preferable in general... because the fact that a popular vote would result in the result i want in this one case is a completely arbitrary and circumstantial fact. and i would want equal rights for gays regardless of how popular or unpopular the idea was with the general populace.
to highlight an example of what i mean.. i think it was you who told me about switzerland and their more direct form of democracy (iirc). i googled that to look in to the idea a bit and found some credibility to what you were saying. i also found an example that runs contrary to pro-democratic rhetoric which manifested in that very country, and manifested as a direct result of populism and direct democracy. the example was the banning of minarets in that country, which was a piece of legislation that was spawned out of a basic grass roots movement that was essentially rooted in nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments in the general populace. so this is an example of democracy resulting in (what i perceive) as oppressive and counter-productive legislation.
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Fair point. I don't believe that democracy always makes things turn out the right way and I was kind of nitpicking your argument. That said, I am still a committed democrat, if just because I think we can't ensure that a ruler that isn't accountable to everyone will make decisions that are good for worse-off groups.
It's sort of a contrast - while I believe that the way courts ought to work (at least at higher levels) involves personal views more than so-called legal philosophy, like I talked about in my last post, I don't believe that it works in the long-run to throw the whole democratic system out the window every time the will of the people disagrees with me. Not saying you support that either, of course.
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that's fair enough... and i know i have an incendiary way of phrasing things... mostly for effect
i don't necessarily say this demonstrates we need a dictator. more that it demonstrates one advantage that autocratic rule has over democracy... that being efficiency/efficacy in terms of getting **** done.
of course autocratic rule has other problems which democracy works to safeguard against... so this can't be used to say "we should have a dictator"
but i just sort of find (in my perception) that many westerners are so dedicated to democratic ideals that they refuse to even acknowledge this simple fact.. because they dislike the ideological implications
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Yeah, like I said, I'm a committed democrat, but I don't have any problem admitting that democratic ideals can sometimes stand in the way of progress. But overall, I still think the benefits of the system (and obviously I'm not a
true democrat, whatever that means) definitely outweigh the harms.